"You need not feel uneasy about your journeying expenses," she remarked, after a pause; "you can easily repay them if you wish, when you reach your friends in Scotland."
Ellen did not hear her. She looked up with an odd expression of determination in her face, determination taking its stand upon difficulties.
"I shan't stay there, Mrs. Vawse, if I go! I shall go, I suppose, if I must; but do you think anything will keep me there? Never!"
"You will stay for the same reason that you go for, Ellen, to do your duty."
"Yes, till I am old enough to choose for myself, Mrs. Vawse, and then I shall come back if they will let me."
"Whom do you mean by 'they?' "
"Mr. Humphreys and Mr. John."
"My dear Ellen," said the old lady, kindly, "be satisfied with doing your duty now; leave the future. While you follow him, God will be your friend is not that enough? and all things shall work for your good. You do not know what you will wish when the time comes you speak of. You do not know what new friends you may find to love."
Ellen had in her own heart the warrant for what she had said, and what she saw by her smile Mrs. Vawse doubted; but she disdained to assert what she could bring nothing to prove. She took a sorrowful leave of her old friend, and returned home.
After dinner, when Mr. Humphreys was about going back to his study, Ellen timidly stopped him and gave him her letters, and asked him to look at them some time when he had leisure. She told him also where they were found and how long they had lain there, and that Mrs. Vawse had said she ought to show them to him.